Disk Activity Alert on SCANSVR1

[16bit]

Hello,

I just got the following alert from the server......

The following disk has low idle time, which may cause slow response time when reading or writing files to the disk.

Disk: 0 C: D:

Review the Disk Transfers/sec and % Idle Time counters for the PhysicalDisk performance object. If the Disk Transfers/sec counter is consistently below 150 while the % Idle Time counter remains very low (close to 0), there may be a problem with the disk driver or hardware.

If the review shows that the disk is functioning properly, use Task Manager to determine which processes are causing the majority of the disk activity. You can attempt to correct the problem by stopping and then restarting those processes.

You can disable this alert or change its threshold by using the Change Alert Notifications task in the Server Management Monitoring and Reporting taskpad.

I'm new to server 2003 and would like some expert help to resolve this problem!!!

any help would be much appreciated!!

cheers,

Iain

 

[ShackDaddy]

Well, you probably have your OS, your pagefile and your Exchange stores/logs on the same physical disk (on C: or D, right? That will create a disk contention situation if people are actually using the server.

To follow the directions in the alert you saw, you need to open up Performance Monitor on your server and add the counters that were mentioned. Look under the Physical Disk object and pick the appropriate counters. Check the results and see if they match what was described above. If they do, you may have a disk/driver issue. But they probably won't. You will probably have a high Transfer/sec counter and your idle will be low during peak periods. This would simply reflect the placement of data on your disk.

To see if it's a particular process causing the problem, you can use Task Manager, but I wouldn't follow the directions they gave to the letter, since some processes, like "store.exe" you would definitely not want to end.

My advice is to add another hard drive if you don't already have one, and move your entire page file to it. If you can add two drives (or two mirrors), move your Exchange data off your root OS drive.

ShackDaddy
Shackelford Consulting

 

[sac9829]

How do you go about moving yout page file?

 

[ShackDaddy]

http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kb...us/EnhancePerformancebyMovingthePagefile.html

Dave Shackelford
MCSE, CCNA, Microsoft MVP: Exchange
Shackelford Consulting

 

[sac9829]

Perfect

Thanks